Today, Anu states that students want to "grow their vocabulary." In business school, it was frequently said, "grow your business." To my ear, you can grow your garden, but you make your vocabulary, or business, grow. What is correct?

Welcome gefgef. Yours is an opinion quite a lot of people share. However, others think there is no categorical distinction that we can make between those examples of business and garden so both forms should be fair game. Is it just what one is raised to recognise, perhaps? And is there any real barrier to comprehension?

Personally although it sounded uncomfortable the first few times I heard it, I now recognise the terms of reference being implied – it’s frequently drawing attention to the fact that there is a meta-business as well as the basic units of trade - and my ear doesn’t ‘stumble’ over it any more.

I think part of the problem is not just recognition, but the fact that many people associate growth with something that occurs naturally or at least not as a direct result of single actions. Growing seems to be more of an overall side effect. So you eat food to grow stronger, but don't necessarily grow stronger from/by eating food; or you engage in marketing campaigns which will make your business grow, but you don't grow your business with marketing campaigns. And growing vocab sounds pretty mystical compared to 'increasing' or 'extending', but it certainly provokes the notion that our vocabulary is something to be nurtured and tended to, which, as a biological metaphor, isn't so bad, I guess. And it is a complicated process which is not just a case of adding new words and usages - so it has to be at least as applicable as growing businesses.

*I think it's merely a second-cousin to psycho-babble: somebody thinks up some sort of catch-phrase designed to stick in peoples' minds; very akin to advertising, or at least public relations, and in this particular instance quite probably implying greed most of the time--and monetary greed makes me VERY angry. So I heartily dislike the phrase, both for its fakiness and implication. [/curmudgeonly rant]

The Orwellian world of business motivational propaganda is awash in psychobabble. I think it's perversely funny that a sphere so known for its conservatism should adopt such flaky methods.

Since we're voicing personal tastes, I like the metaphor of growing one's business. Being self-employed and currently growing my business, it has special resonance for me. Il faut cultiver notre langue.

And while we're on it I also like the term psychobabble, finding it occassionally useful and liking its sound. Fakiness is a great neologism that has not found its groove yet: i.e., less than 1K ghits.

[Corrected typo.]

well, I like the word grow.

heh.®

well, I like the word grow

Me, too. It's like hair - it just grows on you...

Hi zmjezhd, welcome aboard.

I sent you a personal message. You have to click on "Check Private" at the top of the page to get it.

EDIT: Oops, I forgot to add this...

I like the expression "growing a vocabulary" or "growing a business" too.


An iteresting, and very à propos to our discussion, definition I found at Merriam-Webster online...

4 a : to pass into a condition : BECOME <grew pale> b : to have an increasing influence <habit grows on a person> c : to become increasingly acceptable or attractive <didn't like it at first, but it grew on him>

You know it's gonna grow on you Jackie...it is written

Thank you, belMarduk, I have corrected the mistake. zmjezhd.

No prob. I actually quite like that sentence and agree with you; we do have to cultivate our language.

See, I like "cultivate your business" rather than "grow your business". When I see or hear the term "grow your business" it usually is attached to a specific action: "grow your business by advertising with XYZ." But one doesn't say "I'm going out to grow flowers." when, say, weeding or planting or whatever. Growing flowers is a long-term activity involving many other separate activities. So I think I could learn to live with "growing a business" in the sense of "raising children" or "growing flowers", but not when it's used as a lazy way of saying "make your business grow".

Just my opinion, of course.

Is the metaphor of a business as garden or crop that much different from the metaphor (and subsequent legal fiction) of a corporation as person? I have likened companies I have worked for to whales (working in the belly of the beast), labor camps (working in the software gulag), and Los Angeles (time to go off to Lalaland). Why not? It seems to me, if somebody can grow turnips and sugar beets, somebody else can grow a business. Can I not say: "I make my garden grow"? How is this different, in my intent, from "I grow my garden"? (Less fertilizer and Round-Up?) Or speaking of moods and states, instead of vegetables and companies, can I say "It makes my fatigue grow", instead of "I grow fatigued"?

"The pointy-haired boss grows my fatigue with each new meeting he calls."

zmjezhd ~

Please post a link to photographs of your "pointy-haired boss."

Father Steve

'grow a business' has always bugged me. But maybe it's just a matter of brevity. 'Make a business grow' could get pretty tiresome after four of five go arounds at at an MBA seminar.

I don't like the phrase, it sounds wrong to me. But then on reflection I realized that while I would say "I am growing lazy." I don't say "I am growing sweet peas." I tend to say that I planted them or I have them or they are growing in my garden (planters actually.) I provide what they need but I don't cause them to grow. So growing a business makes more sense than growing plants since it is not a natural process.
Hmmm, I seem to have convinced myself tother way round from whence I started.

> Growing flowers is a long-term activity involving many other separate activities.

zackly - that's what I meant by my suggestion that the context often implies a meta-business model. In other words, you might very well undertake an advertising campaign in order to increase your sales, but that would only be a tactical weapon used in your strategic campaign to grow your business, by multifarious means and over possibly a long period. After all, I have quite a few successful business clients who have no intention of growing their business - their strategies tend to other ends.

Apart from consideration of euphony, of course the reason this so irritates some listeners is surely the other common one: language is the badge of office for a disliked club. In other words, some people dislike the social context of the speakers rather than the language itself... see inel's gentle jab about MBA types as a subtle example! :)

I don't say "I am growing sweet peas."

Parboly you just don't up and say, "I am growing sweet peas." But you might say, in response to "Whatcha got goin' in your garden this summer, Big Z?" "Oh, I'm growing corn and zukes and sweet peas and a little Canadian thistle."

Quite true Fong - and how much less remarkable again does the phrase become if rendered other than present tense?!

btw, eta, I also like the very word grow. And the verb to roger, fwiw. :]

>btw, eta, I also like the very word grow. And the verb to roger, fwiw.

What about juxtaposing the two? Is that a jolly concept?

> the verb to roger, fwiw. :]

roger that. :¬ )

'Make a business grow' could get pretty tiresome after four of five go arounds at an MBA seminar.

Yes, but even "make a business grow" is one helluva lot more tolerable than "maximize profitability potential."

"maximize profitability potential"

would be sweet song to such seminarians as those

btb, apropos [of] 'insel's mild jab,' I'm really quite soft on MBAs at the moment, having just finished Barton's "The Man Nobody Knows."

GAH--organic things grow: businesses expand!! [stamping foot e]

I think I'm growing old. Do you think it'll sell?

In reply to:

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GAH--organic things grow: businesses expand!!

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A business is inorganic?

Please post a link to photographs of your "pointy-haired boss."

So far, nobody has been able to capture his spirit on film. Sorry.

A business is inorganic? It's not a living thing, no.

It is a community.

Communities grow.

[___________]

But why is 'to grow' permissably used with inorganic subjects, but cannot be used in its causative sense with inorganic objects?

"Our friendship grew over the course of years."

Many people seem to deplore the attempts of groups (usually governmental) which try to legislate language usage, but then if somebody (actually a lot of bodies) use language in some new way, these same people get bent out of shape.

>>Many people seem to deplore the attempts of groups (usually governmental) which try to legislate language usage, but then if somebody (actually a lot of bodies) use language in some new way, these same people get bent out of shape.<<

The response isn't automatic. Some new usages gain easy, even avid, acceptance. The question is why it is one way or the other. I don't really understand why I don't like "grow a business/friendship," but I do find the usage stomach churning. Not so with cucumbers.

I see why people would want to say: I grew X, where X is inorganic, or grew is metaphorical. There are a group of causative verbs in Enghlish (e.g., break, melt, cook, grow, fall) that allow for sentences were the agent is left out. Kind of similar to the passive construction, but without affixing / changing of the verb form. For example:

The ice melted.
The sun melted the ice.
The window broke.
The boy broke the window.

And I would say that people who use grow in this way are just trying to use grow the way others do with organic things.

The zucchini grew.
Gianni grew the zucchini.

And so:

The company grew.
John grew the company.

Of course, it's not just organic things, because something sounds slightly funny about:

The goat grew.
Mary grew the goat.

So maybe for some people 'to grow' is tightly bound to growing plants rather than animals. Although while googling about the web I did find an interesting turn of phrase: an article entitled "How the Garden Grew the Gardener."

Thank you jez. (if I may cos I keep having to check the spelling of zmjezhd, not to mention the pronounciation) That is it exactly. Grew a business sounds as odd to me as grew a goat. If I reason it out it makes sense to use it but it just sounds odd to me.

Yet, we tell people to grow a spine, a backbone, or a brain. Things that we have no control over growing.

The thing to remember about zmjezhd is that it's one syllable and pronounced exactly like it's written.

But those are all metaphores. We don't actually expect them to grow another brain(icky thought) just to use the existing one better. If we tell a Redwood to grow a branch it will actually . . . well it will actually ignore us but you get the drift.

But those are all metaphores.

Exactly, but then why the ban of extending the metaphor to businesses? At least business do grow. Are MBAs not allowed to wax poetic?